If you are among the folks sitting home wondering if the economic equivalent of a nuclear bomb has gone off, take a deep breath and relax.
Whatever happens at the national level – including the huge investment of taxpayer dollars to bail out the greedmeisters on Wall Street and at Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac – you will read about in The Salt Lake Tribune. In addition, you will read stories on what’s happening in Utah – good and bad.
For instance, in Friday’s edition, Steven Oberbeck wrote a story with the headline: “Going broke: High food costs, job losses propel Utah bankruptcy filings.”
Taken by itself, the story might have worried some readers:
“A growing number of Utahns are going broke as higher food and fuel prices, job losses and burdensome debt payments make it harder to make ends meet,” Oberbeck wrote.
“The number of Utahns who filed for bankruptcy during the first nine months of 2008 increased 42 percent over the same period last year, reinforcing a trend of rising insolvencies only briefly dampened when Congress passed bankruptcy reform legislation three years ago.
“‘We’re on an upward trend that soon may take us back to the number of bankruptcies Utah was experiencing in 2005,’ said Bryson Despain, of the United Way of Salt Lake.”
But in Friday’s paper, we also ran story by Alan Fram of The Associated Press that began:
“WASHINGTON – People are skittish about the economy’s immediate future. Ask how things will be in a year and you hear a different story – and a remarkable show of optimism despite economists’ widespread expectations that a serious recession is brewing.” Hmmm.
And in Friday’s Tribune Money section, we ran a story about a South Jordan business person, Bil Bowser, who has opened a new meeting facility – and thinks he will do fine even in the midst of events outside his control.
A small story on the same page gives information about a program by the Utah Housing Corp. to help Utahns with adjustable rate mortgages avoid foreclosure. And a photograph and cutline inside the Money section give information about America First Credit Union delivering a much-needed donation of thousands of pounds of food to Utah Food Bank Services.
On Friday, breaking news showed up on our Website – www.sltrib.com:
“September existing home sales up 5.5 percent
“Posted: 10:17 AM- WASHINGTON – Sales of existing homes rose by the largest amount in more than five years in September, a real estate trade group said Friday. The data is a possible glimmer of hope that the housing slump could be starting to bottom out.” Are you still breathing?
The staff of the Money section is doing its best to offer all of the economic news from the world, the nation and the state. Some of it will be good; some of it will be bad.
As Business Editor Michael Limon noted, “We can’t say ‘let’s not write about bankruptcies, let’s not write about the stock markets.’
“A one-day headline in the Tribune should not panic people.”
As the news on trouble in the world economies kept coming recently, the Money section folks realized stories needed to be easily available to readers, so they have gathered the latest news on the economy, as well as Q&As, stock quotes and more at The Salt Lake Tribune’s economic and personal finance page on our Web site. I took a quick count of those stories on Friday afternoon and there were 40 of them – some of them good news, some of them bad news – and some of them filled with great tips on riding out this economic tsunami.
